The Brief

A Los Angeles judge has moved a hearing date to late January to consider whether to resentence the Menendez brothers, who were convicted of murder in the early 1990s for fatally shooting their parents at their Beverly Hills home.

On Monday, Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic set a hearing for Jan. 30-31, saying that the previous date — scheduled in mid-December — did not allow enough time for him to review 17 boxes filled with information about the case.

Jesic also said he postponed the hearing "out of respect for the new administration," noting that a new district attorney — Nathan Hochman — had been elected. The judge said he wanted to give Hochman a chance to "weigh in."

Eric and Lyle Menendez listened to the hearing from prison. They are currently being held at the Richard J. Donovan Detention Facility in San Diego County.

The only time they spoke was when one of them said "yes" to the question, "Can you hear us?"

Family members of the brothers were given an opportunity to speak in court Monday. Some relatives of the murdered parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, have been vocal about the case, saying they believe the brothers testimony decades ago that they were abused by their father, and the time has come for them to be released.

"I think it's time for them to go home," said Terecita Menendez, older sister of Jose Menendez, said through tears.

Joan Vandermolen, the older sister of Kitty Menendez, has spoken publicly in support of the brothers previously. She spoke again Monday in the courtroom.

"No child should have to go through what Eric and Lyle went through," Vandermolen said. She acknowledged that her own brother opposes the brothers' release.

The judge’s decision comes a week before Hochman is sworn in as the new Los Angeles County district attorney. It is unclear whether he’ll support the resentencing and release of the brothers as current D.A. George Gascón has done.

Hochman has said he wants to review the case before making any decision. He is a more traditional prosecutor than Gascón, a progressive who has supported the resentencing of more than 300 state prison inmates.

Last month, Gascón said he believes new evidence shows the brothers were sexually abused by their father. The brothers had been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, but Gascón now recommends they be resentenced to 50 years to life in prison — 25 years for each murder.

That would make them immediately eligible for parole.

Gascón supports their release.

Lyle Menendez (second from left) and his brother, Erik are flanked by their attorneys Gerald Chaleff (left) and Robert Shapiro, in Beverly Hills Municipal Court in 1990.

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Nick Ut

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AP

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"I believe that they have paid their debt to society," Gascón said. "And the system provides a vehicle for their case to be reviewed by a parole board, and if parole concurs with my assessment — it will be their decision — they will be released accordingly."

Gascón made his decision after new evidence of sexual abuse of the brothers by their father surfaced in the case. Some of that came to light in a Peacock documentary from 2023.

In it, Roy Rosselló, a member of the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo made his own allegation that Jose Menendez sexually molested him as a minor. Jose Menendez signed Menudo to RCA Records when he was an executive at the company.

In addition, the brothers’ attorney, Mark Geragos, has submitted to the court a letter Erik Menendez wrote to a cousin decades ago documenting the abuse at the time it occurred.

All along the brothers have said they committed the killings because of their father's sexual abuse of them and a fear that he was going to kill them.

Geragos said the January hearing will provide a chance to present reasons why the brothers should be resentenced.

“We’re hoping that by the end of that [hearing] or sometime sooner we will in fact get the brothers released,” he said.

After they were arrested, the brothers never denied committing the killings, in which they repeatedly fired shotguns at their parents as the couple watched television the night of Aug. 20, 1989.

They said their mother knew about the molestation and that hers was a “mercy” killing. Their claims were met with widespread skepticism.

Prosecutors at the time said the brothers were motivated by greed because they stood to inherit their father’s multi-million dollar estate.

Erik Menendez was 18 at the time of the murders. Lyle Menendez was 21. They are now 53 and 56, respectively.

The mayor of Arcadia has agreed to plead guilty to a charge she acted as an agent for China, federal prosecutors announced Monday. She has resigned from her position with the city.

Eileen Wang, 58, faces one count of acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The charge carries a potential sentence of up to 10 years in federal prison.

What we know about the criminal case

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Wang and Yaoning “Mike” Sun of Chino Hills worked at the direction of the Chinese government and with individuals based in the U.S. to promote pro-People’s Republic of China propaganda in the United States. Those actions occurred between 2020 and 2022, prosecutors said.

According to federal prosecutors, Wang and Sun operated a website — known as U.S. News Center — billed as a news source for the local Chinese American community in Los Angeles County. They posted content on the site, described as "pre-written articles," based on directives from Chinese government officials.

Sun, 65, pleaded guilty in October 2025 in federal court to acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government. He is serving a four-year federal prison sentence.

Prosecutors also said Wang communicated with John Chen, whom they described as “a high-level member of the [Chinese government] intelligence apparatus,” in November 2021, and asked him to post an article from her website.

In a group chat, Wang referenced the article and wrote: “This is what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wants to send,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Chen pleaded guilty in New York to acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China and conspiracy to bribe a public official. In 2024, he was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison.

What's next

Wang, who was elected to the City Council in November 2022, was expected to make her first appearance in U.S. District Court Monday afternoon.

Citing a plea agreement, prosecutors said she's expected to enter the guilty plea within the next few weeks.

Arcadia's mayor is selected from the elected council members. A post on the city's website announced that Wang had resigned her position as of Monday and that a new mayor would be picked from the remaining council members at the next meeting.

The Supreme Court on Monday gave itself more time to consider a national ban on telemedicine access to the abortion pill mifepristone.

Justice Samuel Alito extended an earlier order he issued by three more days, so rules for prescribing mifepristone online or through the mail remain in effect through Thursday at a minimum.

The case at issue

The tumult over the future of telemedicine access to mifipristone started on May 1 with a ruling from the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. That ruling re-instituted prescribing rules from before the pandemic that required patients to receive mifepristone in person in a doctor's office or clinic.

The Food and Drug Administration determined that the rule was medically unnecessary in 2021. The state of Louisiana sued last fall, arguing that telemedicine access undermines the state's abortion ban.

What is telemedicine abortion?

The telemedicine abortion process starts with a patient connecting with a healthcare provider on the phone or online. If the patient is eligible, that provider can prescribe two medications — mifepristone and another pill called misoprostol. Patients can pick up the medicine at a local pharmacy, or providers can mail the drugs to a patient's home.

That access is a big part of the reason why the number of abortions nationally has actually increased since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022. Now, most abortions in the U.S. use this combination of medications, and one quarter happen via telemedicine.

After the 5th Circuit ruling, some providers said they would continue offering telemedicine access to abortion medication using a different protocol that involves higher doses of misoprostol and no mifepristone.

Researchers say that method is just as safe and effective, but tends to cause more pain for patients and more side effects, like nausea and diarrhea. Misoprostol has other medical uses, such as treating gastric ulcers and hemorrhage, and has been on the market longer than mifepristone. It is likely to remain fully accessible, even if mifepristone is restricted.

Since the FDA's prescribing rules for medications apply to the whole country, a change to the rules about how mifepristone can be accessed has national impact. That means it affects states with constitutionally-protected access to abortion, states with criminal bans, like Louisiana, and all states in between.

States' rights

Nearly two dozen Democratic-led states submitted an amicus brief in this case, writing that the appeals court decision put the policy choices of states with bans above the choices of states "that have made the different but equally sovereign determinations to promote access to abortion care."

There are also stakes related to the power of FDA and other expert agencies to set rules. While the Trump administration's FDA did not respond to the Supreme Court's request for briefs, a group of former leaders of the agency, who served under mainly Democratic and some Republican presidents, wrote about this in an amicus brief.

They defended the FDA's process in approving the medication and modifying the rules for prescribing it, and say the appeals court decision "would upend FDA's gold-standard, science-based drug approval system."

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